foreach my $line (@array) { my @column = split( /\s+/, $line ); print $column[0], " ", $column[1], " ", $column[7],"\n"; my $columnID = $column[0]; foreach ( my $columnID ) { while ( $columnID =~ /(^FBgn\d+)/ ) { my $ID = $1; print $ID, "\n"; } } }